Lagos PDP chairman set to defect to APC

By Wale Elegbede and Temitope Ogunbanke

Barring any last minute change of plan, the Lagos State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Hon. Moshood Salvador, is set to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Salvador is to join the ruling party with some executives of PDP and about 17 of the 20 PDP Local Government Area chairmen in Lagos State. New Telegraph exclusively learnt that Salvador has been having a running battle with some key leaders of the party in the state over the composition of the State Working Committee (SWC).
Salvador, a former member of the House of Representatives from Lagos between 1999 and 2003 on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), became the state chairman of the party in November 2017. The PDP has not won governorship election in the state since 1999. According to a source within the party who craves anonymity, the pressure on Salvador to defect to the APC is coming from two ends: he wasn’t having it rosy in the party and the leadership of the opposition in the state is also on his neck to dump the PDP.

He said: “The cold war between him (Salvador) and his estranged godfather, Chief Bode George, must have reached its peak. First, it was about the 65-35 per cent of the State Working Committee and later the issue of the killing of Apapa Local Government chairman of the party, Adeniyi Aborishade. “The leadership of the party was already divided between Salvador and George, who is the supreme leader of the party in the state. What we are not sure of is whether the defection came on conditional terms from the APC in Lagos.” Salvador was conspicuously absent on Saturday at the party’s secretariat when a presidential aspirant of the party and former Governor of Kaduna State, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, paid a courtesy visit to the executives and delegates of the party in the state. He was represented at the parley by the State Secretary, Prince Muiz Dosunmu. Speaking with New Telegraph, yesterday, Salvador confirmed his imminent defection from the PDP, saying that he can’t be working tirelessly for the party and his efforts are being rubbished by some people in the party.

He said: “Yes, it is true that I am leaving the party. How can I be working and somebody will be throwing it into the dustbin? How can I be fetching water into the basket? It is terrible!” The embattled PDP chairman, alongside 10 other party members, was recently arrested and arraigned by the police on two charges of conspiracy and unlawful killing of the Apapa Local Government chairman of the party, Aborishade. Aborishade was murdered on Saturday, July 21, during the PDP’s “visitation meeting” that held at Igbosuku Village, Eti-Osa Local Government Area.

Source:- Newtelegraphonline